Friday, December 11, 2009

We interupt the Year in Review...

The Aspinwall Pullover is done... sans blocking. Sorry for the fuzzy photo... that's the best of the lot. For some reason my autofocus camera has decided that it doesn't like to autofocus anymore (and it doesn't have a manual focus). Good enough to do some project stats, tho, eh?

Problems with the pattern: there were some math errors. The row gauge/directions/schematics do not match at all. Easily fixed, but something to be aware of if you are knitting this (especially for someone taller than Matt).

Changes to the pattern: the big one is the change on the half brioche stitch on the bottom. I hated working it in the round (I don't p2tog well). Plus even after only 3", the stitch biases drastically. If I had done the entire bottom in the half brioche, the stitches would probably have biased all the way around. I suggest if you knit this, do the half brioche flat (in two pieces), then seam it to do the fair isle in the round. The rest of the pattern is done as written. (with the exception of the extra st. st. after the fair isle to make the body long enough... which was to correct the gauge/directions error. If I had done it as written, the lower body would've only been 15", and even for Matt's 5'4" height, that would've been too short).

Overall impressions: I'm very happy with it. I do like the look of the half brioche stitch on the bottom half. Changing it to st. st. was purely for self preservation so that I could get this sweater done and not go insane. I love the fair isle band and the half zip. I think it fits Matt quite well and I loooove the color. Giving this a thumbs up.

I now have 3 weeks to finish one more project. No sweat, right? (especially when I consider that the Aspinwall Pullover was done in two weeks.... heck, I can even cast on a new project.... hmmmmm....)

2 comments:

Hi there,I may have sent this twice, sorry if I did. I am daring to take on the Aspinwall Pullover but am having trouble with the Half Brioche pattern. For Rnd 1, do you create a new stitch when it says yo, or do you just put the yarn over? I assume you make a new stitch, since in the next Rnd, you K1, P2tog which would bring you back to the original number of stitches. Can you help?Kelly

Yes, you are making a new stitch, so you'll actually have to wrap the yarn around the needle (a simple just yarn over will only bring the yarn to the front to work the purl stitch). You'll then be decreasing the extra stitch on the next round.

That extra wrap was probably one of the reasons I found the stitch to be very slow.